most pathetic excuse for wordplay in Young Money's "Bedrock"

from fact magazine:

Thank Me Later is as strong a debut as the rap genre has had for years now, and with it Drake deserves to be popular and acclaimed to boot. His story might be different, his style might be quirky, but his relevance right now can’t be denied; this album could be as important for hip hop as Merriweather Post Pavillion was for contemporary indie rock.

i mean what is this the global challops conspiracy?

clearly it's the skinny jeans Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

if it was just the critics who were rating this thing then i'd just put it down to ignorant critics still searching for the "big Hip Hop record" that didnt come out last year. but then theres the rappers co-signing drake too. don't get it

i think the rappers co-signing are more understandable/predictable than the critics. dudes in the industry are basically a bunch of yes men who'll rally around whoever it makes sense to feature on their next single etc. anyway.

i mean a critic can at least have an opinion on shit without any real consequences most of the time. if a famous rapper doesn't like or publicly endorse another famous rapper it quickly becomes "beef." i think Jay-Z might be just kind of passively going along with the Drake thing because anytime he didn't vocally throw support behind someone like Game or Wayne when they were coming up it turned into some ridiculous media circus.

yeah that is true i suppose. whole thing is quite depressing. i'm left hoping jeezy or t.i. drops some jaw-dropping summer album and the industry can actually rally around something worthwhile.

tbh T.I. could drop a Drake cover album and I would enjoy that more than Drake himself, because I really can't stand the way dude sounds

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/clicktrack/2010/06/album_review_drake_thank_me_la.html

Chris Richards (ex Q and Not U and now Wash. Post critic)likes it:

His concluding paragraphs:

Though he's been championed as incumbent rap royalty, Drake's strongest analog resides in a neighboring star system. Her name is Taylor Swift.

For generations, both country singers and rappers have traded with the same currency: the notion of authenticity. Accordingly, both Drake and 20-year-old Swift are pushing their respective genres forward by retooling what it means to be "real." He gets his heart crushed in the tabloids, she gets her heart crushed after sixth-period Biology. Both can flip these painful personal experiences into supremely pleasurable hooks.

Yet as similar as they are, Swift's songbook galvanizes fans with its youthful charm. Drake's output feels far more downcast, much more remote.

He's tugging on a strand of pop music that feels both magical and rare - the kind that brings us all together by reminding us that we're all alone.

christ what is with this theme of drake's universal relatability

the record these ppl want this to be was released last year by kanye west!

xpost to some dude: also his management were tight with jay era roc-a-fella

the richards review was upthread

yeah obviously Jay has personal connections to the guy via Kanye and other people too. i'm just saying i think Jay is probably tired/wary of "get out of the way old man" friction with new stars and is just trying not to rock the boat at this point.

supposed to have a phone call w/ Richards today abt something unrelated on the terms of "let's not talk about Drake" haha

if there was an article interviewing some emo cult of drake fans that'd be one thing, but it really just reads like critics are taking (for the sake of the argument) tolerable possible-platinum and trying to find wrestle poetry from it and its success. the reviews praise him so much for his complex miserabilism without really suggesting what THEY get out of it, instead saying WE do - something apparently proven by his success even though that could easily be credited to famous friends and TV stardom.

these reviews are ridic

yeah it must be an industry thing cos drake is hardly consistent with jay's otherwise impeccable taste xp

I realize critics aren't usually comfortable getting personal in reviews, but this "when drake weeps, we weep" shit really does require a little openness on the part of the writer.

i hate to say it, but there appears to be a lot of relating to a middle-class d-bag among critics.

the p4k ending is "his struggle is our struggle and so our struggle is cool"

comparing drake to taylor and basing it on assumptions of authenticity is the dumbest bullshit.

I hate to pull the "critics overpraising popular shit to keep their jobs" card because it's a real tired one usually used to ignore a writer's argument, but when the argument appears to be "we are all entitled, miserable assholes and Drake is our spokesman" you kind of want to give them a cynical out.

I guess critics didn't have to write "we are all rick springfield" back in the day because there were enough worthwhile, successful-enough artists to not bother with corporate rock the way they do now with corporate rap. Unless they did! I wasn't there.

honestly although there's always going to be some hivemind stuff going on with a lot of critics, i don't think it's fair at all to say anyone is toeing the line to keep their job. i mean unless you work for Rolling Stone and are trying to pan the new Springsteen or are at some irrelevant little site or local paper that only prints positive reviews, nobody's writing raves to avoid getting fired.

haha yeah i know, its usually more of a "drinking the kool-aid because we like the taste of kool-aid" thing than "drinking the kool-aid because otherwise my editor will shoot me" thing. it's just...wow, this kool-aid.

http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2009/7/68%20oh%20yeah.jpg

what did you think of the record, forks? since this is now the drake thread i guess

et tu, juzwiak? http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2010/06/the-evolved-male.html

still haven't cracked it; I'm behind on my listening by about a month. Should I go ahead and youtube listen and get it out of the way you figure?

tbh T.I. could drop a Drake cover album and I would enjoy that more than Drake himself, because I really can't stand the way dude sounds

― cunty body bean sauce? (HI DERE), Friday, June 18, 2010 6:46 AM Bookmark

hearing tip say "make the pussy whistle like the andy griffith theme song" and lolling now tbh

i'm not gonna criticize people for what they look for in rap, but if you can sit thru that whole drake album simply cuz he's "gayer" than other rappers is... more power to you, i guess?

i mean if you really want to listen to rap that pushes the boundaries of masculinity and sexuality in hip-hop, you might want to listen to the dude that calls himself a fag and a bitch on record and compares himself to the queen of england

^^^^

et tu, juzwiak? http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2010/06/the-evolved-male.html

at first i was like "oh, not rich too..." but he actually found a half-way interesting lyric relating to women and focuses more on what's (allegedly, I still haven't heard it and I'm not in a rush) beguiling about the sound of Drake.

surely u don't mean the standard cliches pandering to a demographic that he calls "uncannily in tune with women's psyches"?

mos def, pharoahe monch, devin the dude, z-ro, freddie gibbs & max b are all singing mcs btw rich

boosie/webbie - "independent" > 'thank me later'

yeah, the point about singing rappers was a bit nonsensical, especially with him pointing out lil kim, one of the most terrible singers i have ever heard, as an example

haha ok that "uncannily" phrase is a stretch (and yeah, rich appears to be nodding along tropes he should be challenging), but that lyric is probably the best Drake-to-lady couplet I've seen in any review yet, if by default. this is just the first review i've seen that describes what could be a sundae, rather than describing shit and calling it a sundae.

also I like that he's calling drake a neutered anomaly rather than the voice of our collective aspirations or whatever

rich always has a pretty good perspective on music, just think he's failed on the "taste" front here

yeah even when I disagree with his conclusions he can be totally OTM:

Forget the baggage and just listen to what an anomaly he is. He raps like he's repressing a squeak, his voice frequently flirting with shrillness (that's made even clearer when he contrives a more booming delivery -- on the braggy single "Over," he goes for butch but just sounds hoarse).

"You say you droppin’ 10 lbs., preparing for summer / And you don’t do it for the men, men never notice/ You just do it for yourself, you the fuckin’ coldest"

to me this is a dude watching tv/reading Cosmo in order to pick up "insights" to hit on females with. i guess using em in records is hella novel. bow down.

it's a retread of his most successful lines

"sweatpants, hair tied, chillin' with no makeup on/ that's when you're the prettiest, i hope that you don't take it wrong"

which is well-executed but basically steve martin in Housesitter

i mean i care a lot less about whether Drake LOOKS "the way a rapper should look" than that he doesn't SOUND like any rapper i'd want to listen to i.e. his voice and delivery are fucking annoying

xpost

follwed with "...you the fuckin' best" of course xpost

"Drake sounds like he reads cosmo" is more intriguing than anything in that damn pitchfork review.

i'm willing to bet that drake would brag about reading cosmo if he was asked about it

kind of amazing to me that people still think "fame isn't all it's cracked up to be" is a novel or worthwhile topic for a musician to explore.

i read the SHIT outta some cosmo... SCENTED TOILET PAPER

kind of amazing to me that people still think "fame isn't all it's cracked up to be" is a novel or worthwhile topic for a musician to explore.

schadenfreude is never going to go out of style

lol forks